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Introduction: The Emerging Understanding of Lateral Interactions
in the Cortex
Risto Miikkulainen and
Joseph Sirosh
Department of Computer Sciences
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712
risto,sirosh@cs.utexas.edu
Abstract
In the last few years, several new results on the structure,
development, and functional role of lateral connectivity in the cortex
have emerged. These results have led to a new understanding of the
cortex as a continuously-adapting dynamic system shaped by competitive
and cooperative lateral interactions. Many of the results and their
interpretations are still controversial, and computational
investigations can serve a pivotal role in establishing this new model.
This book brings together eleven such investigations, each from a
slightly different perspective and level aiming to explain what function
the lateral interactions could play in the development and information
processing in the cortex. In this introductory chapter, current
neurobiological data on lateral interactions in the cortex are first
briefly reviewed, and several open questions about their role in
cortical information processing are presented. The other chapters in this
book attempt to answer some of these questions in terms of specific
mathematical and computational models. An overview of these chapters is
given in the Overview section, providing a roadmap for the rest of the book.
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